The story of Jesus turning water into wine has long been a puzzle. It was not just a bit of wine he produced, but a tank full! Those committed to abstinence at best and temperance at least find it hard to imagine Jesus beginning his ministry with such an invitation to drunkenness. Nor is it much comfort to construe the wine as unfermented grape juice. In the first place, the Greek word is wine, and in the second place any effort in those pre-pasteurized days to keep grape juice free from the yeasts of the air would have been futile. It was wine all right. Despite Mr. Welch, who first produced an unfermented beverage for Methodist communion services, the wine of the last supper was also precisely that -- wine. For those of us who spend a large chunk of our time dealing with alcoholics this text is somewhat of an embarrassment.

The story, only recorded in the fourth gospel, takes place soon after Jesus has chosen his disciples -- mostly home grown Galileans. Cana, the site of the tale and the home of Nathaniel, lies a scant five miles from Nazareth. At least one member of the bridal party was known to Jesus' family, since it is recorded that his mother was among the invited guests. Weddings in those days were extravagant events. Life savings were spent making certain the guests had the best time possible. The reception was far more than punch and cake, with a few nuts and mints thrown in. And the party didn't end in the two hours we allocate. It went on for seven full days! Sometime toward the end of the festivities, Jesus and his friends arrive to pay their respects to the happy couple. Jesus' mother takes him aside and tells him of a rather serious problem. It seems that the supply of wine had given out andthe host is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

After what appears to be an irritated comment to his mother about why the depletion of the liquor cabinet ought to be his problem, Jesus has the servants fill six large urns, which sat by the door and provided guests with water to wash their hands and feet after the dust of the roads. According to the text, each urn held 20 or 30 gallons. We are not talking about tea pots. Multiply it out and you get something between 120 and 150 gallons. That's at least 600 bottles! And this after the robust supplies originally laid in for the week-long party were depleted.

According to the editor of the fourth gospel, this was Jesus' first miracle. Some have suggested, tongue in cheek, that he was still practicing the tricks of the Messianic trade, and wanted to start out slowly. Providing bread to feed the multitudes, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind and raising the dead would follow later as he got on to it. Water to wine, as far as miracles go, was a piece of cake.

Not only is that reading distasteful, but it misses the point the writer of this gospel was seeking to make. One need not trust the historicity of the event to see the point. This may have been a story circulated in the early church to give evidence that Jesus was indeed powerful. It would not have been the only tale around the ancient world in which the deity started out with water and ended up with wine. John often takes allegories, symbols and tall tales and uses them, not as descriptions of what actually went on, but as ways to say something about Jesus.

Nor does the story have to do with alcohol and how Jesus sanctioned its use. I do not need to go through the litany of Biblical texts which take a dim view of drunkenness. Be alcoholism a disease requiring treatment or a moral weakness requiring discipline -- or a combination of the two -- neither Judaism nor Christianity are drug cults, and alcohol is America's most commonly used drug.

Wine in the scripture, however, is often spoken of symbolically. If we are told not to be drunk with wine but to be aglow with the Spirit, and if we are warned that strong drink is a mocker, wine is also a symbol for fullness and joy. New wine, yeasty and powerful, should not be put in old wineskins, says Jesus. It is too full of life. Wine is the substance of celebration as well as debauchery. There are about 250 references to wine in the Bible. Some see it as evil, and some as food, and some as the proper vehicle for celebration. A land of wine and bread is a good land. Wine, like religion, defines both the best and the worst about life. More blood has been spilt, more inhumanity practiced, more sexism, racism and classism sanctioned by religion than by any other cultural form. But just as religion tells the worst about us, it also tells the best. If the church produced the bloody and tragic Crusades, it has also produced hospitals, care of the poor and elemental justice. That makes religion powerful and potentially dangerous stuff. It is not to be played with or taken lightly.

The same is true with wine. There are people around us and in our midst who shouldn't take a drop -- some of them know it and some play the dangerous game of pretending it isn't so. Likewise, those who are tempted to use religion as a way to rally our kind of people against some national enemy, so that we can go off and kill them with the cross of Jesus going on before, ought to stay away from religion altogether. It is far too potent to let them use it for their own purposes.

This story was remembered and recorded not to say something about wine, but to say something about Jesus. It is Jesus who has come to take the ordinary, the flat, the tasteless, the common and transform it into something robust, heady, hearty, joyful. The point is this: Jesus can transform human existence. In him is all the fullness of God. In him is life, and when he touches our lives what is common and ordinary and flat becomes beautiful.

Now we are getting to the heart of the story. It is not about saving the neck of a host by restoc_esermonsking the wine cellar. It is about transforming human existence and human society. It is about making silk purses out of sows' ears.

Somebody says of a chap I know, "He'll never amount to anything." But that judgment only proves the judge doesn't know much about the power of God. Remember this event took place at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. He had just called the first disciples. If there ever was a bunch of sows' ears, the disciples qualify. Who were they? Fishermen and farmers, a government employee -- the wrong government -- a couple of revolutionaries, a doubter, a few others who were so harmless and mild they were never heard of again. Later on Jesus would turn to them, and their leader, Simon Peter, and say, "Upon (you) I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." You've got to be kidding, Jesus! Not that bunch of sows' ears. But Jesus turned them into silk purses, and history since then is a celebration of the miracle.

Sometimes the wine he made of this tepid water which became the church has been the vehicle of drunkenness -- that is the dark side of religion. But sometimes that wine defines the noblest, the best, the most celebrative and life-giving side of human existence.

Look around this room. Do you see any archangels, any spiritual giants? I love you all, but you look like a pretty ordinary crowd to me. And God takes us and makes of us the church, and the gates of hell cannot stand against it. Sows' ears we may be, but by the power of God we can become the kingdom's silk purse.

There are two other things about the wine Jesus made from water. The first has to do with its quantity. There was plenty -- more than enough. When God gets ready to bless, there is an abundant supply. God is not stingy. We get blessings piled up, pushed down, shaken together and overflowing. If we tend to ladle out life carefully, give carefully, serve carefully -- a teaspoonfulat a time, God gives blessings so great we can't even use them all. Maybe the host at this wedding feast, given the lateness in thecelebration, only needed a couple of bottles for some last minute guests. What he got was 150 gallons. That's how God gives.

Not only was there plenty of wine, but according to the guests, the host had saved the best until last. It wasn't Gallo jug red, it was Chateau de Rothchild 1974! I don't know what you expect from God, but patrons of Hallmark aren't the only ones to send the very best. God didn't send a third echelon messenger, some minor angel. God sent a Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. If you think you are only getting small gifts from God, the problem may be your small expectations.

Finally, if Jesus gave us life at its best, symbolized by turning water into wine, how dreadful it is to see a church that has gotten the trick backwards and continually manages to turn wine into water. A religion which is always solemn, ponderous, heavy, dull, full of thou-shalt-nots, and joyless violates the core of this text -- as well as practically every text in the gospels. There ought to be more joy in worship, more laughter at our committee meetings, more celebration when someone wins a victory. Somebody among us has been fighting a hard battle over alcoholism -- and by the grace of God turns a corner, has been sober for a year and is finding life productive and rich again. She comes down front and says so. There ought to be cheers, applause, foot stomping, for water has been turned to wine.

And you, do you ever feel as if God produced just one more sow's ear when you were created? No, my friend. You were made to be a silk purse, and if that is not how you see yourself, just drop by Cana and pour your weak will, your broken, watered-down existence into one of the great stone jars you will see by the door of a house where a party is in progress; and wait, for Jesus is about to arrive. "